Anthroposophy: Encyclopedia II - Anthroposophy - Place in Western Philosophy

Anthroposophy - Place in Western Philosophy

The Epistemic basis for Anthroposophy is contained in the seminal work, The Philosophy of Freedom, as well as in Steiner's doctoral thesis, Truth and Science. These and several other early books by Steiner anticipated 20th century continental philosophy's gradual overcoming of Cartesian idealism and of Kantian subjectivism. Like Edmund Husserl and Ortega y Gasset, Steiner was profoundly influenced by the works of Franz Brentano (whose lectures he had heard as a student at the University of Vienna) and had read Wilhelm Dilthey in depth. Through Steiner's early epistemological and philosophical works, he became one of the first European philosophers to overcome the subject-object split that Descartes, classical physics, and various complex historical forces had impressed upon Western thought for several centuries. His philosophical work was taken up in the middle of the twentieth century by Owen Barfield, a philosopher of language from Oxford University and through him influenced the Inklings, a group that included such writers as J.R.R. Tolkein and C.S. Lewis. It was also taken up by the philosopher (and prolific author) Herbert Witzenmann. Steiner's philosophy has not found widespread recognition by academic philosophers outside of the anthroposophical movement, however; one exception is Richard Tarnas, author of The Passion of the Western Mind.

Steiner's philosophy begins by recognizing a division between our sensory experiences of the outer world and our soul experiences of an inner world consisting of thoughts, feelings and intentions (will impulses). He focuses on how our thinking in particular complements what we experience through the senses; one facet of the world is its outer appearance, a second is its inner structure. We access the two separately but they are originally united in the objective world, and we have the capacity to reunite them through creating a relationship between our percepts and our concepts, between what we experience outwardly and inwardly. He claims we only understand an aspect of the outer world when we find this connection between our sensory impressions of it and our concepts about it.

Thus, though all experience begins subject to the subject-object divide, through our own activity Steiner says we can progressively overcome this divide. This lies in our free will, however; we are given the divide but not its overcoming.

Steiner also examines the step from thinking as determined by outer impressions to what he calls sense-free thinking. Thoughts without sensory content, for example mathematical or logical thinking, is clearly a free deed. He thus believes he locates the origin of the free will in our thinking, and in particular in sense-free thinking. Especially in his later work, Steiner asserts that the objective truths attainable through mathematics and logic are evidence of an objective non-sensory world - a world of spirit/mind that is not subject to the subjective nature of our inner experiences. (The German word Geist means both spirit and mind.)

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Place in Western Philosophy", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki